Defective
by DaphneRunning
Summary: Nymphadora Tonks, the youngest Auror in the office, is convinced to join the Order of the Phoenix.


Author's Note: I wrote this as a gift for a friend. Hopefully you enjoy it, Evie.

"Defective"

_SLAM_.

Tonks fell out of her chair at the sound of the papers hitting her corner of the desk, nearly swallowing her chewing gum. "Oy, watch it, Rufus!" she said in annoyance.

The head of her office frowned down at her. "You wanted to be an Auror," he said sternly. "You had better start acting like one. This is your paperwork from last Thursday's excursion. The quicker you file it, the sooner you'll be done."

She stared, aghast, at the towering pile of parchment. "It'll take me ages to file all--" She stopped talking quickly at the look on Scrimgeour's face. "Er," she said in a much lower voice, "of course, sir. I'll get right on that."

Due to being her parents' only child, followed by a stint as "the most interesting student out of Hufflepuff in an age" (according to certain Professors, at least), Tonks had long enjoyed a bit of laxness where the rules were involved. While this may have undoubtedly qualified her as "interesting," it did not endear her to many authority figures. Scrimgeour had not wanted to pass her, but after her (mostly) top marks in training had had no choice, especially compared with her year-mates in training.

There had been twelve candidates besides herself when Tonks had first signed up to become an Auror. They were all out of her year at Hogwarts except one, a perky witch from some school in the East who had just moved to Britain. The tasks at first had been challenging but fun, testing commitment, daring, and inventiveness in all the cadets. One of the boys from Ravenclaw had left in the first week due to a bad case of nerves.

There had been bonding time, where all the cadets slept in the same bunk area and told stories and asked fearful questions late into the night, constantly speculating on what the next day would bring. There had been a rather pretty boy, she remembered fondly, who had never said two words to her at school, but since beginning training had made every excuse to be near her. She had flirted shamelessly, even kissed him once on lunch break. He had dropped out after six months and a 'practical' test had turned his toes permanently neon-colored and squeaky.

Three, all Gryffindors, had left by the close of the first year, unable to cope with the sheer amount of work they had to do, the constant tests day after day, the strenuous living conditions. That, Tonks had thought triumphantly, was what they got for thinking that Gryffindors made the best Aurors. Hard work got her there every time in the end. She was so proud of herself for sticking it out that she wore her hair in various shades of yellow-and-black stripes for a week.

The first day they had gone to see the actual Auror office, Tonks had been unable to contain her excitement. She knocked over two hat racks on her way into the office--in her defense, she thought indignantly, who had that many hats? She hadn't been excited to see the office itself, but to meet all the legendary Aurors she'd heard so much about over the course of her life. Most of those she'd heard of, of course, wouldn't be there. Scrimgeour's speech about what an Auror would be required to give up for the job, about the perils to life and sanity involved, had scared another girl off the week earlier. As the excited (or terrified) trainees toured the office, however, it became increasingly obvious that none of the famous Aurors of the war against You-Know-Who were currently employed by the Ministry. Well, Tonks thought in disappointment, that was probably to be expected. It had been twelve years, after all.

The next year of training took four more of her classmates with it, making her one of only three to attempt the final year and all the inherent perils. The final year of training was sobering--there were no more bets taken on who would fall first, who would go home to their parents either a nervous wreck or in a box with a note of apology signed by the Minister of Magic. Tonks and the two others, the witch from the East and a quiet dark Ravenclaw, stuck tightly together as the "survivors." They were sent out on real missions with a "chaperone" now, and were working night and day to prepare for the strenuous battery of tests that awaited them at the end of the year.

The boy from Ravenclaw became the first actual casualty only two months before testing, accidentally setting off a trap while tracking a wizard who had eluded capture from every Hit Wizard the Ministry had sent. The resultant curse had left only bones and the faintest scrap of his a shoe, clinging to what had been his ankle.

Tonks considered quitting after that, wrote home and confessed to her father that she was frightened, ashamed, terrified, nauseated, a quitter, and everything else she could think to confess. Oddly enough, it had been the fact that he understood, that he wanted her to come home and be safe, that had solidified her already-large ambition. She had stuck it out.

Scraping by by the skin of her teeth on Stealth and Tracking, taking top marks in everything else, Tonks had tried to feel sorry for the other girl, who had gone back to her country in fury at her failure. Still, she had to admit that she was proud to be the only Auror passed into the ranks in the last three years, and wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

The feeling of entitlement that came with such a sentiment caused her to groan at the large stack of papers on her desk once again. Her boss, Rufus Scrimgeour, was not the sort of man she wanted to tease. No sense of humor, no understanding of the way that young people thought, he was nonetheless a capable wizard. She just wished he could crack a smile every now and again, or at least put up with her own grins. In fact, no one at the office was all that friendly. She thought that she had almost caught Kingsley Shacklebolt giving her an appraising glance at one point, but he had been looking away when she turned towards him.

Everyone in the office was the same, working very hard day after day and not seeming to get much done that couldn't be handled by a secretary. Every couple of weeks someone would go out on a mission, which more likely than not would be a wild goose chase, and have to come back and file more papers regarding property damaged, curses employed, sources interrogated, memories modified, locations trespassed upon, the works. The filing and sorting took far longer than the actual missions, and she quickly learned that the more spells used, the more memories modified, the longer it would take to complete the work after. _That's why they really teach us Stealth and Tracking_, she thought glumly. _The quieter we are, the less they can prove we were there, and the less papers we have to file._

None of it would have mattered if she had felt as if she was doing some good in the world. The trouble was, no one seemed to be committing crimes serious enough to require Aurors. There was always the odd sadist, the occasional madman, a random lunatic claiming that the Dark Lord would rise again, but those were easily solved. Tonks found herself wishing on many occasions that there would be another war, just so that she'd have something worthwhile to do with her training.

She had purchased a flat in central London, close to Headquarters, soon after graduation. Her pay more than covered the rent, and it was certainly much nicer than apparating all the way to her parents' house every day. In fact, what she liked the best was that it was a short, brisk walk from Headquarters, short enough to make magical transportation both unnecessary and ridiculous.

It was on one of her walks home that she was ambushed.

From out of nowhere, two strong wizards had appeared next to her and seized her arms, one of them silencing her nonverbally and the other disarming her manually. Tonks thrashed and tried to scream, but one of them said in her ear, "Be still. We mean you no harm."

This did not endear Tonks to her captors, and she felt nausea coming on her again as they turned on the spot, the horrible wrench of Side-Along Apparition taking her who-knew-where.

She blinked as she found herself in front of what looked a very cozy little house, complete with smoke rising in cheery tufts from the chimney. "Inside," a voice growled in her ear, spoken by the second man. Having no other options, she allowed herself to be led through the gate and up into the house, still unable to see her captors.

Tonks was secured in a chair--oddly comfortable for a kidnapping, she thought in some confusion--and kept in a room that was still mostly dark. She felt the curse on her tongue being lifted as the two men stood above her. "We aren't going to hurt you," the first one said again, and she thought the voice sounded vaguely familiar.

"Oh, yeah?" she asked challengingly. "Then why didn't you just invite me over for tea, eh?"

The shorter man chuckled, making her angrier. "I'll never tell you anything, you know," she said in defiance. "No matter what you do to me."

The shorter man came closer to the light then, not close enough for her to make out his features, but enough that she felt the urge to shrink back. "That's the first thing you've got to understand," the man growled. "Anyone can be broken, if someone's willing to hurt them enough. Anyone."

Tonks swallowed hard. They had been taught methods of dealing with torture while in training, had each had the Cruciatus curse placed on them for less than a second by Scrimgeour with a trained medi-witch standing by. It had been the single worst half-second of her life, leaving her gasping and twitching. She was still proud that she hadn't cried, like most of them. She stuck out her chin firmly. "Then you'd better get started," she said, hoping she sounded braver than she felt.

The taller man chuckled, and it was a deep, reassuring sound. "We're not going to hurt you, Nymphadora Tonks."

All of a sudden, she recognized the voice. "Wait," she said in panic, "what... Kingsley?"

"Told you she was quick," said Kingsley Shacklebolt to his companion. "I've maybe spoken to her once, ever, and she knows my voice."

"But can she be trusted?" said the second man in his harsher voice.

"That's why I brought her. To see." Kingsley turned to the girl in the chair and said in his deep, slow voice, "We are going to give you a choice. You can either accept our proposal, or we modify your memory and send you back to your home unharmed."

She blinked. That didn't sound like much of a choice. "What's the proposal?"

"To do something real."

Tonks sat up eagerly. "You mean there is something going on? Is the Ministry covering it up? There are people working against Dark Wizards somewhere, are there?"

"He's back," Kingsley told her. "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. He returned last week to corporeal form and is planning to take over once more."

A shiver that had nothing to do with cold ran down Tonks's back, like an icy finger tracing her spine. She had wanted something to do--but she certainly hadn't wished for Voldemort to return to power. "And that's...for sure, is it?" she asked, hoping her voice wasn't quavering.

The men both nodded. "There's a catch to working with us," Kingsley continued as if he hadn't just told her the most evil wizard in history was actually alive and killing once more. "You have to be willing to put your trust in an agency other than the Ministry. You have to be willing to work as a double-agent, within the Auror office itself."

"It'll be hard," the shorter man growled. "It'll take all your time and your courage and your skill. You'll probably get tortured or die young, or both. Don't think this is an easy, fun thing we're offering."

"This is what they told me in Auror training," she protested. "Be tortured, die young, catch Dark Wizards. But I never do anything real there. I'm not afraid, but how do I know this would be different?"

The light in the room seemed to intensify in brightness, until she could see the faces of the men looking down at her. "I guess you'll just have to trust us," said Mad-Eye Moody, the most famous Auror to survive the First War, the man she had read a book about when she was twelve, her first inspiration to become a Dark Wizard Catcher, and her eyes went wide.

"I think we can untie her, Mad-Eye," said Kingsley. "She's not going anywhere, are you, Nymphadora?"

She shook her head furiously, excited beyond belief at the chance to meet her hero. "No, I want to stay!"

All of a sudden Moody's face was very close to hers, the scars even more dramatic up close. "That's your first mistake," he growled. "Never trust anyone who hasn't proven their identities. How do you know we aren't Death Eaters in disguise, hmm? We could be using you to get information on the Ministry's inside dealings."

"Not likely," she scoffed. "If you were Death Eaters, finding me alone and unaware you would have just put the Imperius Curse on me, or stolen my hair for a polyjuice potion. And I rather think I'd be either dead or tortured by now, and you wouldn't be talking about untying me."

He looked marginally less annoyed, but only marginally. "Too many should haves and I thinks in there. You have to be sure. You have to be _vigilant. _You have to _know_ you're safe, not just suspect, and you have to make sure that everyone--"

"All right, Mad-Eye," Kingsley said in the same slow voice. "She understands. Don't you, Nymphadora?"

"Don't call me that," she said in irritation. "My name is Tonks. And yes, I understand the perils of fighting Dark Wizards, even fighting You-Know-Who. And I want to do it."

The bonds around her loosened, though Moody still looked suspicious. "You shouldn't accept so quickly," he growled, but she snorted.

"I'm not a little girl. Don't tell me what not to do," she said, then gulped. If she had talked to Scrimgeour like that, she'd be out on her ass in ten seconds flat. What if Moody was the same way, stiff and humorless?

After a second's pause, Moody's gash of a mouth split into a grin, which Tonks answered. Oh, yes. She had made the right choice.


End file.
